Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol's inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. "We won" the election, Nixon fumed, "but they stole it from us."

Indeed, the dirty tricks that helped defeat Nixon were more devious than merely the ballot-stuffing of political lore. In one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century political history, Kennedy operatives secretly paid off an informant and set in motion a Watergate-like burglary that sabotaged Nixon's campaign on the eve of the election.

It began in the fall of 1960, when the Kennedy campaign spread word that Vice President Nixon had secretly pocketed money from billionaire Howard Hughes, whose far-flung business empire was heavily dependent on government contracts and connections. Reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Time magazine corroborated the allegations, but their editors feared publishing such explosive information in the last days of the tightly fought campaign.

So the Kennedys turned to two crusading liberal columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, who had been attacking Nixon for the past decade. It was "a journalistic atrocity" to conspire with "the Kennedy hawkshaws to help us get the goods on their opponent," Anderson admitted, but scoring a scoop to destroy Nixon was simply too tempting to pass up.

Anderson dropped by the Washington office of Kennedy lawyer James McInerney. With "a pride that only the diligent investigator can know," Anderson recalled, the Kennedy operative pulled out "a neatly arranged packet which I devoured unceremoniously."

The confidential documents revealed how Hughes had funneled to the Nixon family $205,000 (worth about $1.6 million today) using various intermediaries, including one of Nixon's brothers, to disguise the transaction.

This is the more likely explanation as to why Nixon chose to not contest the Illinois ballot stuffing. The Kenndeys have been scum from day one. I’m thankful that there are no more of them in Washington.

4
posted on 01/17/2011 9:28:07 AM PST
by Buckeye Battle Cry
(Conservatives want a CHOICE not an echo - No more RINOs!)

Between the votes of the “dead” in Chicago and elsewhere and the smears that occurred, it wouldn’t surprise me if JFK stole the 1960 election. Joe Kennedy made his fortune on skirting the law with bootlegging so this follows the storyline. Joe would have had his fingers and those of his mobster buddies in a lot of vote counts and smear stories about Nixon. I’m glad there are no Kennedy’s in Congress now.

So the Post sullies the Democrats? Why? Well to alledge with conviction that Nixon was crooked. The Kennedys were just Robin Hoods uncovering the dirty tricks of Nixon. So a Democrat takes a $100,000 bribe and we are to believe him.

I don’t have TV, but I was visiting my son in Chicago a few months ago and was watching a History Channel program about strange stuff, and the Bermuda triangle came up.

They proceeded to pull out the same tired BS stories that had everyone a twitter back in the late 1970’s, but have been completely exposed since then. It was like watching those old “Chariots of the Gods” specials from back in the day.

I lost a LOT of respect for the History Channel that day. They were literally teaching ignorance.

Yeah, I thought this was common knowledge. Votes were stolen in Chicago (hard to believe, I know) and in Precinct 13, Texas hill country, LBJ’s stompin’ grounds.
The election was very close. Nixon could have pulled an algore, but took the high road and conceded.

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